Microsoft have announced that Internet Explorer 9 will not be available for XP. Since the latest version of the web language (HTML5) supports 3d and video playback without having to rely on a third party program (such as Silverlight or Flash) and the libraries are available in Windows Vista and 7, the browser won't work on XP or below.

Microsoft advise XP users to stay with Internet Explorer 8. I'd personally advise users to switch to Mozilla Firefox, where HTML5 is supported in the browser for XP.

Dropbox is an interesting program. It installs on your computer(s) and when you put something in the dropbox folder on one computer, it will be in the dropbox folder on another of your computers.

For example, say you have worked on a word processing document on your laptop in one location and want to access it on a desktop at home, you drag it in the dropbox.

If you want to access your files from anywhere, you simply go to their website and you can access the files in your dropbox on a web page. You can even email a link to your dropbox to someone else, say for a photo album.

The first 2GB is free, you do have to have internet access in those locations for dropbox to share your files, the files are shared securely. They charge $9.99p/m for 50GB space and $19.99p/m for 100GB space.

One of the most useful pieces of software for netbooks that don't have DVD drives is Alcohol Soft's Alcohol 120% and 52%.

Basically, Alcohol 52% creates a virtual DVD drive on your computer, you simply mount DVD images onto its virtual drive from a memory stick and then the computer sees it as a DVD drive.

Alcohol 120% enables you to create a virtual DVD drive as well as make DVD images for copying to a memory stick or mounting on a virtual DVD drive. You can also burn DVD images to blank DVDs if you have a DVD writer.

Note that the virtual DVD drive will play CD, DVD and Blu-ray disc images.

Alcohol 52% is free, since it only mounts images. Alcohol 120% is available as a 15 day trial and is available half price 39€ instead of 70€.

Whenever you switch to another antivirus program or upgrade an old one, sometimes files are left behind that prevent you from doing so. 

So here are the removal tools for the most popular antivirus programs on the market.

AVG have been up to their old tricks to get people to buy a copy of their free antivirus. 

You need to remove the old copy before installing the new one or you may find your computer doesn't boot afterwards.